Movie Review: Elysium (2013)

Max Da Costa (Matt Damon) spends his days working in a factory, building the militarized droids that abuse him and never let him forget about his past life, employed as a car thief. In the sky you can see Elysium, a floating world that houses the rich and powerful, while the impoverished workers like Max are left to toil on a polluted Earth, fighting for basic necessities.

Max promised his childhood friend Frey (Alicia Braga) that, one day, he would take her to Elysium. Today he will make good on that promise. Frey’s daughter is dying of cancer, and only the medical technology on Elysium can save her. Max, too, is dying from radiation poisoning, relying on a power suit to function
normally.

As you may have expected from Neill Blomkamp, the talented director behind District 9, Elysium delivers in terms of visuals and style. However, where District 9 was strikingly original, Elysium falls heavily into convention, delivering a steady stream of movie cliches, and unfolding almost exactly as you would expect. That being said, it’s still an entertaining summer blockbuster that delivers the thrills, despite a painfully uneven script.

Movie Review: The Wolverine (2013)

When we first find Logan (Hugh Jackman) he is alone in the Canadian wilderness, living in a cave with only the bare bone necessities needed for survival. He’s still haunted by his past; a vision of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), the woman he was forced to kill in X-Men: The Last Stand, visits him in his dreams, asking the former Wolverine to join her in death. But Logan can’t join her in death. He may never be able to die, thanks to a healing factor that feels more like a curse than a blessing at this stage in his life.

The Wolverine is a personal journey for Logan, who struggles to reconcile the pain he’s caused with the fact that he’ll never answer for it. In this unexpectedly deep character study, Logan will face his past head on, dealing with not only the memories of his tortured life, but the demons he created from the people he chose to save.

Logan finds a bear in the woods that is slowly dying from a poison. Little does he know that the fate of this one animal will soon parallel his own life.  After heading to Japan to meet a man he saved during the bombing of Nagasaki (Hiroyuki Sanada), Logan is given a proposition: transfer his healing factor to the man, allowing Logan to live the normal life he’s always longed for.

Movie Review: The Conjuring (2013)

 

I’m an atheist, a skeptic, and a rational human being. I don’t believe in gods, psychics, demons, ghosts, or other spooky things. That being said, I’m a huge fan of The Exorcist, and I am perfectly capable of employing the suspension of disbelief necessary to thoroughly enjoy a film about demon possession.  I went into The Conjuring with an open mind, expecting to enjoy some classic horror thrills. But what I saw instead was a movie that seemed obsessed with falling into the realm of the completely absurd, destined to just be another forgotten mainstream horror film.

The Exorcist was tempered in its execution, relying on traditional scares, clever lighting, and superb sound design to sell you on its premise, and that’s why it was so effective. The Conjuring starts out following this time-tested formula, but soon devolves into nonsensical crap, stabbing your suspension of disbelief to death with one of the silliest exorcisms ever to haunt a horror movie, floating shotguns and biting demons included.

My Interview with Third Eye Weekly on BreakThru Radio

 

I was interviewed by Molly Freeman of Third Eye Weekly about the use of special effects and CGI in cinema. The interview came about after Molly read my reviews of The Hobbit, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Oz the Great and Powerful, where I criticized the use of computer effects as a replacement for matte paintings and model sets.

Check out the interview here: BreakThru Radio

Follow Molly on Twitter (@MollyRockIt), and I'm sure she'd like you to follow her show, too (@ThirdEyeWeekly)